Constant Messengers

I have a Buddy List on my AOL account at home. It's nice because through instant messaging, friends and relatives pop on the screen from time to time to say hello. As some technological advancements are wont to do, this instant-messaging feature soon could permeate our entire online habitation. And it's not only our current hard-wired online existence that could be affected. This capability could extend as far as the WAP-enabled phone you soon will be using.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yellow Freight's customer-service agents currently field inquiries from customers via AOL's Buddy List. It seems that instant messaging is making inroads into corporate call centers and customer-support operations.

Instant messaging has the potential to work well in customer situations. What I want to know though is how long it'll be before salespeople will be developing buddy lists with their clients? Restaurants with their regulars? Personal-service merchants, such as hair stylists with their clientele? If you let your mind wander into more sinister directions, how long will it be before a new breed of online telemarketers have you on their buddy lists. (You know it'll happen now that consumers have a way to avoid phone solicitors through caller ID and delete lists.)

But even that isn't as far as it could go. Visualize the day when you are using your new GPS wireless Palm-like communications device. You could be driving down Main Street in your hometown, while listening to your e-mails or downloading news stories. Suddenly a computer-devised voice interrupts and alerts you to an instant message. It's your friend Ted, whose office is one block from your current location. Thanks to his instant mobile messenger, he sees that you are driving by and suggests that you stop by for lunch, if your schedule permits. Or maybe, you are phoning home while walking through the local mall. Eddie Bauer and Abercrombie & Fitch, which send you catalogs and online coupons on occasion, see that you are a mere 500 feet away. They each send you an instant message: "Did you know that the fleece warm-ups are on sale?" Was this really more important than the live voice messages you were retrieving from home? Or suppose the stock market is suddenly in the toilet. Your money, earmarked for your retirement in 20 years, seems to be washing up like dead bodies in the East River. Do you really want an instant message from someone trying to hawk cemetery plots?

All is not doom and gloom, however. Some analysts suggest that this form of instant messaging, whether on your home, business or wireless device, will morph into the new communications companies, further displacing today's Ma Bells. This argument, while somewhat daunting when you imagine all of those pesky messenger pests contacting you constantly, actually is good news for wireless data. It suggests that wireless data and short-message service will be far more successful than wireless voice. And today's hat-changing wireless-service providers are bound to cash in thanks to their new roles as ISPs.

All of this future messaging and communications actually should be beneficial for B-to-B and B-to-C activities. Let's just hope that the rate structures that wireless-service providers settle on for data don't have the feel of today's non-calling-party-pays environment of wireless voice. I may appreciate these instant messages about opportunities and bargains, but I sure don't want to be paying for them.